The field of the invention is treatment of inflammatory arthritis.
Inflammatory arthritis is a family of arthritic diseases characterized by lymphokine-mediated inflammation of the joints. Inflammatory arthritis is often autoimmune in origin; examples include rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and lupus-associated arthritis. The most common form of inflammatory arthritis is rheumatoid arthritis which occurs in approximately 1 percent of the population. Rheumatoid arthritis is characterized by persistent inflammation of the joints. Inflammation can eventually lead to cartilage destruction and bone erosion.
Stukel et al. (Immunology 64:683, 1988) report that a monoclonal antibody directed against the interleukin-2 receptor inhibits passively transferred adjuvant arthritis in rats (i.e., adjuvant arthritis induced by transfer of spleen cells from rats having adjuvant arthritis to naive rats), but is not effective in suppressing the development of adjuvant arthritis in rats.
Case et al. (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 86:287, 1989) report that a cytotoxic interleukin-2-Pseudomonas exotoxin fusion protein administered prior to the establishment of overt clinical disease mitigates adjuvant-induced arthritis in rats.
Rapidly proliferating synovial cells are characteristic of inflammatory arthritis. It has been proposed that "factors produced by . . . macrophages and synovial fibroblasts in the joint lining that can influence one another in a resonating or paracrine manner" may play a role in rheumatoid arthritis (Zvaifler, Am. J. Med. 85 (supplement 4A):12, 1988).
There is evidence that rheumatoid arthritis synovial cells have twice as many receptors for epidermal growth factor as normal cells (Yocum et al., Abstract D98, pS150, 54th Annual Meeting American College of Rheumatology, Seattle, Wash. October, 1990).